


Dare

by monsterkiss



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: F/F, Gambling, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 18:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterkiss/pseuds/monsterkiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd wandered into a house of cards built on iron and lace, but she was a Detective, and there were some things you just couldn't learn in the cold light of day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dare

“My earliest childhood memory… is chasing a dog across the yard of our old house, dressed only in the most _hideous_ little shorts.”“My earliest childhood memory… is chasing a dog across the yard of our old house, dressed only in the most hideous little shorts.”

“Lie,” Kirigiri responded immediately, slipping a few more chips into the pot. Celes laughed her delicate little laugh, matching her bet with a practised flick of the wrist.

Kyouko pointedly avoided her gaze, turning instead to the clock on the wall. 1:55am, almost two hours longer than she had planned to spend indulging this little game. She couldn’t let her irritation show, though. She was already a few points behind for deigning to acknowledge that useless bit of dishonesty. Celes’s room made her uncomfortable; it was enemy territory, claustrophobic yet exposed. But that was the point, wasn’t it?

The next card: a seven of diamonds. Utterly useless. She neatly stacked ten more chips and slipped them across the table. “You _are_ very daring today, Kirigiri-san,” Celes murmured. Even at this hour her make-up was perfectly arranged, her eyes bright. Despite her best efforts she was staring into them again, she realised.

Kirigiri forced her eyes to casually rest on the two kings in her hand a moment before shrugging. “The sooner this childish game ends, the better. I like to keep a regular sleeping schedule.”

“I’m afraid gambling isn’t much of a morning enterprise.”

“Certainly not the way you do it. Perhaps you should train one of the other nocturnally-inclined students to play with you.”

Celes rolled her eyes at that. A small, spontaneous thing, a point to Kyouko. “Oh, of course. I’m sure Mondo would be an excellent challenge. Or perhaps you were implying that I should take our super high-school level programmer under my wing? She’d burst into tears at the loss of a few hundred yen. Or maybe… Naegi-kun? Can you even imagine that poor little round face trying to bluff? Or Yamada… ugh, the mind recoils from the thought.”

“I’m sure you would find some enjoyment in it.”

“ _Now_ who’s lying, Kirigiri-san?”

She called again. Kirigiri wondered what exactly she was playing at. Card-counting was almost a certainty, and since they were on her own turf it could be taken as read that the deck was fixed anyway. Celes wasn’t stupid or bored enough to steamroller her out of the game though, that would be too easy, too simple.

It was cheating, but it was so crushingly obvious that calling her out on it was clearly the losing move. Despite ludicrously high stakes every other hand their piles of chips had remained overall equal throughout, one winning, then losing, lapse, recovery. And the insipid smalltalk, Celes’s unchanging attitude… She wasn’t playing to win at all, she realised, or even to lose.

“I’m done.” She laid her cards down on the table, leaning back in her chair with a stretch.

“Really?” The look of surprise and disappointment could have been modelled from a manga reaction shot, and quite possibly had been. “And I was so sure you weren’t bluffing! I was about to fold myself, in fact. Perhaps my super high school-level gambling skills are beginning to fade with age?” She began pushing the chips across the table, but Kirigiri stopped her, pushing them back (brushing their fingers, leather on metal).

“You misunderstand. I’m withdrawing from the game. It was… fun. We should do this again sometime, perhaps when I’m not quite so busy.”

“If you were going to lose I can of course understand wanting to drop out, but doesn’t it seem a little… silly, just quitting like this?” She pushed her remaining chips into the pot, clawed fingers glinting under the electric lights. “At least finish this hand properly. Call or fold, and it’ll all be over neatly.”

“Why bother at all, then?”

“To see who wins, of course!” Celes said, as though Kirigiri had asked why one should bother breathing in and out.

“I really don’t care either way.” She stood, pulling her jacket off the chair, “if it bothers you so much then we can just say that you win, by default.”

“I must say, I never thought someone as mature as you would be a sore loser.” When this weak jibe failed to halt Kirigiri’s walk towards the door, she added, “Is it possible to ‘win by default’ in the course of being a detective?”

The tiny growl, the not-quite hidden note of bitterness sent a chill running up her spine. She wanted to whip around to catch the glare disfiguring that elegant face, but she forced herself to turn slowly.

“Not really. But then the stakes are a little higher than in these sort of games.”

There were teeth in the smile now. Finally. “Oh, you prefer the more dangerous kind of game? Why didn’t you say so? Did I ever tell you how I won the life savings of a rather well-known businessman in a game of Russian Roulette?”

The word ‘lie’ was almost on the end of her tongue before she reconsidered. Celes would do it, if the prize was good enough. Maybe even if it wasn’t, just to show that she could. ‘Gambler’ was a poor title for her, really, when she did everything in her power to eliminate luck from her games. A two-hundred yen bet or a bullet to the head; what was the difference if you already knew that the outcome would be favourable?

She watched the gears spinning behind those eyes. It was what she’d imagined, growing up with detective novels and family memoirs alongside a child’s imagination. A cunning adversary who could anticipate her every move, always one step ahead. She even had the black clothes and talons, for god’s sake.

“I’m afraid I don’t tend to carry a gun on my person. Perhaps you can think of something else?” The girl steepled her fingers and tilted her head in an exaggerated pantomime of contemplation. The trick wasn’t in reading Celes’s honesty or lack thereof, she’d realised early on, though it certainly helped. The trick was managing your own bluffing, knowing when to puncture the fabrication and remind her that you knew that she knew that you knew. Playing the meta-game and the meta-meta-game. It was ridiculous and exhausting and at times, she strongly suspected, not worth it, but it was also intensely stimulating.

Celes stood up from the table, revealing her hand as she did. Kirigiri kept her gaze steady on the other girl without checking to see if she would have indeed won the game or not. Too obvious. Straightening out her already perfect skirts, Celes approached her.

“You know, I do find you very amusing sometimes, Kirigiri-san.”

Time to call. “Is that why you’ve been deliberately wasting my time for almost four hours now?”

Another laugh, and then that perfectly painted face too close to her own as Celes rested her wrists on her shoulders, her fingers toying with her hair. “I’d dare say one could go so far as to say I enjoy your company.”

Pulling away would be an obvious show of weakness, but those hands in her hair and the heat seeping through her shoulders was distracting. “How flattering. I’m sure my father will be delighted to learn of my newfound popularity in the school.”

She moved to lift one of Celes’s hands away, but the fingers twisted in her grip until she was the one being held. Celes pulled the gloved hand towards her mouth and for the briefest moment Kyouko was sure she was going to bite it.

Celes pressed the leather to her lips, her cold eyes steadily gazing into Kirigiri’s own. “I might even say that I was rather fond of you.”

She could leave the room. That knowledge rang loudly in her head over the furious buzzing that seemed to fill her up in those few seconds. She could walk away. This wasn’t a case; Celes hadn’t committed some terrible elaborate crime that required the swift hand of justice (probably). The door was behind her and unlocked. She held that information very carefully in her mind as she murmured “another lie,” and pulled her hand firmly away and leaned in to kiss Celes’s slightly-smudged lips, taking care to very deliberately smudge them a little more. Neither of them had closed their eyes, and she could see the tiny muscles in her iris work to widen her dark pupils.

“Really, Kirigiri-san, one day I will lose my patience with these awful attacks on my character.”

“I’m afraid it is in my nature to pursue the truth.” Celes was still gripping her hand.

“Yes, yes, the relentless pursuit of objective fact and so on, you really mustn’t lecture me again, Kirigiri. Your love for the dull and linear is tragic enough to move me to tears.” With her free hand she stroked Kyouko’s hair, almost gently. “You’re far too limited altogether. It’s such a waste.”

She stared at her a little longer. For all her words the look in Celes’s eyes was not quite pity or disdain, rather more introverted than that. It was enough to make her bite back her response about the relative wastefulness of one who used their talents purely to pursue childish dreams of extravagance and materialism, instead answering with another harsh kiss. This time, when they parted, Celes’s eyes were closed.

“Ah, but still far more interesting than the others, I think. Perhaps it is better overall then; I would be so frightfully bored without you.”

“I’m sure you would find a way to amuse yourself.”

“Hmm.” And just like that the mask was back, the gentle smile and razor-blade fixed in place. “Will you be staying after all, then?” The nod towards the bed could only have been detected by the most precise of instruments. “Or will you leave me alone again to ‘amuse myself’?”

She could always leave. That was part of the point. For a moment she considered walking away just to see if she could catch that twisted look of anger on her face. But… Celes didn’t gamble unless she was relatively sure of the outcome, and the smudge of her make-up and the slightly unguarded flush just showing on her cheeks was intriguing.

From a tactical standpoint, of course. A weak-point that could be pushed until the whole mechanism collapsed. After all, what kind of detective story ended with ‘and then she left the room and went back to bed by herself and that was that’? Why keep raising the stakes only to fold?

Celes’s white skin was feverishly hot, and her claws traced lines of fire down her back that she answered with deep biting bruises on her chest and under her rumpled skirts. Leather and lace like a second skin between them, infuriating, she dug her fingers into the hard permanence of her bones until she whimpered and gasped, a surer proof than any mark on her flesh, and if Kyouko failed to bite back a few breathless noises in turn, then it was a loss well worth the prize.


End file.
